Sherborne, Dorset, UK, December 2009

Morris Dancer's splendid jacket

Ancient High Street architecture, Sherborne

Ivy

Morris Dancers, Sherborne, UK, December 2009

More of the local Morris dancers doing their thing for the amusement of all

Christmas Preparations 2009, Sherborne, Dorset, UK

Merry Christmas everyone!

Getting crazy with the combination of slow shutter speed and flash, to both blur and freeze motion in the same frame. Top: rotating the lens. Middle: moving it sideways. Bottom: zooming in!

Interestingly, some of the tree lights we put up are revealed to be flickering at a very fast speed, which is why they are not smooth lines but dotted ones. By the way, we DID also have fun putting up the tree...

Counter...

... back to normal already so it was probably just a blip, thank goodness.

Counter reset...?!

I noticed with great displeasure the resetting of my 16000+ viewers from 199 countries to... 12 viewers from 7 countries, this morning. Contacted NeoWorx to request that the old totals - still existing for my blog on their site - be returned. Frustrating!

Morris Dancers, Sherborne, UK, December 2009

Slow shutter speed reveals the action of these wild guys. More to come.

Great new vacations site

http://www.thatvacationfeeling.com/

Check it out.

Bournemouth and Sherborne, UK

LOVE the smell of salt air. And that of fresh bread, for that matter

London, England, November 2009

Maple leaves near my cousin's house, Canada Water Underground

London, England, November 2009

Welcome, at 17000 visitors, to Jersey's first!

My maternal uncle David's 80th birthday party, for which he traveled down from Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago; including his daughter, her husband and his 4 granddaughters and others. Great time.

Back Soon

You wouldn't know from the last few posts that my wife and I were going through a crisis last week, but I had posted them well in advance. Then, on November 23, after a couple of days in hospital in southwest England following days of severe stomach pain, she had a miscarriage, and we lost our baby. Too small at 18 weeks to know if it was a boy or a girl, even. So we've been grieving with all this.

I'll be posting regularly again soon.

Random Set

Three leftover shots - have I posted the last of these before?

My friend Mamuka K'apanadze at a recent exhibition of his paintings in Tbilisi, October 2009

Autumn leaf, Sherborne, UK, November 2009

Restaurant courtyard, Brasov, Romania, 1992 (scan from slide; have I posted this already long ago?)

Southwest England, November 2009

A couple more of my girl - in car and phone box windows, the former with me as an added bonus reflection

Southwest England, November 2009

Windows as natural frames - a favourite subject of mine; that's Lali in the lowest shot

After Rtveli, Kakheti, Georgia

Rather forlorn-looking vines after the bunches of grapes have been cut off; and corn sheaves tied in cones - autumn has arrived in Georgia

Rtveli, Kakheti, Georgia, October 2009

Rtveli means "harvest (grapes)" in Georgian - a hugely important event in the country, especially in Kakheti, which grows most of the grapes, and where most of my in-laws live. Here, brother-in-law Zura and I are taking buckets of grapes to the press, which sends them to the huge clay kvevri waiting below ground. (Focus was a bit off on 2 of these as I'd forgotten to put the choice back from manual to autofocus on the camera, but never mind, it'll do for the blog.)

Tbilisi, Georgia

Do CDs really have that rainbow sheen you've seen in photos, or is it an illusion? No trick of the light here, as direct images show (though you can't prove easily that the effect is part of the photo, I suppose). Just playing with my camera in October.

Mtskhketa, Georgia

Insectophobes, beware! Today's images - of a praying mantis in Georgia's old capital, Mtskheta - won't please you. But it's a harmless creature at this size, its sharp forelegs little able to pierce my fingers as they do the other insects on which it preys.

Komyati, Ukraine, 1992

Today: Remember, to avoid repeating, if possible in this world. Fascism was defeated those decades ago, but communism had taken solid hold.

Poland, 1992

Hard to believe it's been 17 years since I was all over Eastern Europe - Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine - before settling in St. Petersburg, Russia in September 1992. The bottom 2 shots are from Czestochowa, famed for its Black Madonna icon. Just above them, the 2nd frame is the main square of beautiful Krakow.

Southwest England, 1990

My 800th blog post!

More from where Lali and I are now, but dating from my first visit to the UK as an adult. I lived briefly in Mere, Wiltshire, where the 2 b/w shots (of beech trees) are from; then I settled in Milborne Port, Somerset, where the colour shot of its main street is from. Early film scans, but better than nothing!

Southwest England, early 1990s

3 more from where I lived from late 1989 to mid-1991: Sturminster Newton, Mere and the Blackmore Vale. After that I found myself in Moscow, USSR (as it was), and caught the coup attempt against Gorbachev on film in late August (photos from which can be found much earlier on the blog).